1. Field
Exemplary embodiments in accordance with principles of inventive concepts relate to a semiconductor package, and more particularly, to a semiconductor package having a variable data interconnector that may be selectively varied according to users' choice.
2. Description of the Related Art
Semiconductor packages may be manufactured, for example, by mounting at least one integrated circuit (IC) chip structure onto a single die pad. An electrode pad of the IC chip structure usually makes contact with one of a plurality of contact pads in the die pad and the IC chip structure is covered by an encapsulant. The contact pad is usually connected with external contact elements. As electronic systems including semiconductor packages have been improved to have a small size together with high performance, the semiconductor package for the electronic system has also developed into a small-sized package, such as a flip chip package, having a single IC chip structure or a high performance package, such as a multichip package, having a plurality of stacked IC chips.
The application field of the IC chip structure has been enlarged to mechanical industries with automotive semiconductor chips and a biological and medical industry with semiconductor chips for medical devices, for example. As a result, the data interconnector for electrically communicating between external data sources and semiconductor chips (that is, IC chips) has been modified according to usage characteristics and requirements of various application fields of the IC chip. For example, the data transfer structure between a semiconductor package and an external data source has been diversified into bit organizations of X4, X8 and X16, and the number of allowable channels can be varied in the multichip package.
However, conventional semiconductor packages are usually manufactured by a series of standard processing steps, and thus the standard manufacturing processes cannot meet all of the specific details and individual requirements for every usage condition and surrounding of the semiconductor packages.
For example, multichip packages are usually classified into one of three categories according to the number of the allowable channels such as 1-channel packages, 2-channel packages and 4-channel packages, and the multichip packages in each category are manufactured by their own processing steps. That is, the 2-channel packages are manufactured by standard manufacturing lines that are different from those of the 4-channel packages. Therefore, it is difficult in general for the user of the multichip package to modify the 4-channel package into the 2-channel package according to the user's requirements and surroundings of the multichip package.
In the same way, semiconductor packages having a bit organization of x8 is usually difficult to be modified to have a bit organization of x4 according to usage conditions and requirements of individual customers.
For those reasons, customers are obliged to select their semiconductor packages from among standardized semiconductor packages that feature data interconnectors that are as similar to their own usage requirements and surroundings as possible. As a result, most packages are less than optimal for an individual customer's requirements.